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'Buffalo Spammer' nabbed in New York |
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New York state authorities have arrested the e-mail marketer "Buffalo Spammer," in the state's first criminal case against a junk mailer.
On Wednesday, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said that his office brought four felony and two misdemeanor charges against Buffalo, N.Y., resident Howard Carmack for alleged identity theft and forgery that allowed him to send more than 825 million e-mail messages through the Internet service provider EarthLink.
By Stefanie Olsen
May 14, 2003
Carmack is alleged to have opened more than 340 accounts with EarthLink using stolen credit cards and other false documentation, causing the ISP to lose in excess of $1 million in network resources and bogus accounts.
Spitzer said that a recently enacted identity theft statute, as well as the cooperation of the FBI's Buffalo Cyber Task Force, the New York State Police and EarthLink during a yearlong investigation of Carmack, led to the arrest this week.
"Spam itself is not illegal. What makes this criminal conduct is the intersection of spamming...with forgery and identity theft," said Spitzer during a press conference call.
The criminal case against Carmack is the state's first under the identify theft statute, according to Spitzer. Not only does it allow the state to confront one of the fastest-growing areas of criminal conduct--identity theft--but it also "sends a message to others who are spamming," he said.
The case comes a week after EarthLink won $16.4 million in a federal court judgment and injunction against Carmack, who got his moniker from the ISP. That case, filed in November in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, alleged that Carmack, 36, had used stolen credit cards, identity theft and other illegal means to purchase hundreds of Internet accounts in order to send out unwanted mail.
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